


A No-Ham Birthday

by minklenox



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Cute, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minklenox/pseuds/minklenox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Sherlock's birthday, and John has a sequence of three small gifts he would like his friend to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A No-Ham Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So, as is par for the course, I shall mention that this is my first fanfiction. For Sherlock.  
> And I'm very excited about it. And very excited to share it with you.  
> Have fun reading! ^.^

 

"John?" Sherlock called. The living room was a mess. His skull was not on the mantel. The oven was on.

Everything was chaos.

"John?" he called louder. Nothing.

Sherlock cracked one eye open. The flat remained in unusable condition with nary a John in sight. A sound emitted from the oven - a small animal, its inside collapsing, he couldn't tell. At least, not from his spot on the couch from which he really _shouldn't_ have to move, as he and John have discussed. 

Thin dregs of smoke whispered from the stove. Sherlock's eyes snapped to the smoke detector. Oh no. Oh, please.

"John!" he called one more time in desperation. More smoke poured into the living area, invading the doorway, the kitchen,  _his couch._ The smoke detector sat ominously above his desk, a space that the smoke was moving toward in great leaps and bounds. 

Both of Sherlock's eyes were open now. So. It has reached this point. No matter.

He closed both his eyes, took a deep breath and let himself drift - thoughts of old cases danced, new compositions for the violin, how to bribe the dry-cleaners to dye all of Anderson's wardrobe bright orange.

"Sherlock!"

"Mm?"

The shuffling of plastic. Shutting of the door. Huffing, heavy breathing, swearing, pounding of feet, clanging of metal,  _terribly_ pungent smoke plateauing in its pungency. A loud loud ringing piercing Sherlock's ears very suddenly. 

A moment passed. The ringing stopped. John's presence felt next to the couch. "Sherlock," he said. Stern. Calm.

"John, you do need to work on your passive-aggression. Aside from the obvious fact that it's unbecoming, it's also embarrassing to listen to you try to hide your emotions." One eye open. Steadfastly on John, who was now tinted grey like an old photograph. "You're truly rubbish at it."

John grimaced as he wiped away the ash from his now rather ugly yellow jumper. "Sherlock, I told you that I was going to to the store."

"Yes." All the windows were open, Sherlock noticed. So was the oven.

"And I told you I was baking a ham."

"Mm."

"And I asked you to take it out in twenty minutes. Two hours ago."

"An hour and forty-nine minutes, John."

"What  _difference_ does it-" he began, hand on his temple. He turned away from Sherlock and surveyed the dingy mood of the flat. The smoke was dissipating. A fire extinguisher lay abandoned on the carpet. Sunlight spilled into the flat and lit up Sherlock's couch unabashedly. Sherlock shifted away from it. 

"John," he said abruptly in answer to his flatmate's unfinished question. "You never take longer than an hour to do the shopping when you have a list. I heard you writing this morning, and in the morning you rarely write anything but grocery lists. It's a Wednesday afternoon, you have off work, nobody else does, minimizing the chance you'll have stopped to chat with anybody. It takes twenty minutes to walk to the shop. If the ham were due to be properly ready to eat in twenty minutes, then you would be back before it was completely burnt and started a fire to worry about. As you can see, there is no fire. You were back on time and I have not moved from the couch, as I too have a routine on Wednesday afternoons and I do not plan on deviating from them unless absolutely necessary."

Finished, Sherlock closed his eyes again and continued to figure out who Anderson would most likely use as his launderer.

"You…" John began. Are brilliant? Always. Astounding? Not a surprise. Impressive? For you, John. "You calculated that I would be back before a fire but not before the ham was completely inedible?"

"Precisely."

"Sherlock-"

"Rachel is Jewish. She wouldn't have eaten your ham and would have been less than impressed should you have offered it to her. I think a 'thank you' would suffice in this situation. Ham is hardly a casualty large enough to impede gratitude." There, that should do it. Best to ward away John's frustration with impression and relief. The go-to solution to relieve him of that irritating hands-on-hips disposition of a disappointed mother hen.

“Sherlock, Rachel isn't coming tonight.”

Both eyes open now. Not on John, on the kitchen. Upon the table remained his jars of eyeballs and decaying teeth. Sherlock's coat was still flopped over one of the chairs. The pictures of John as a child his mother had mailed him were still on the fridge, and sometimes women coo at them (sample size: Mrs. Hudson) but John always takes them down.

And his skull wasn't on the mantel because it was _on the desk._ Sitting on top of a dusty blue rag. In its place were two candles – purple.

Sherlock's favorite color, which John had somehow impressively deduced entirely on his own (or it was coincidence. Unlikely).

“It was for us.” Eyes back on John. He was smiling.

Odd. This was odd. Something was different about today. Something he was missing.

“It was for you. You adore ham.” A bigger smile. “Welcome to thirty-three. I would have wished you a happy birthday earlier but I figured if you didn't realize I remembered you wouldn't anticipate any surprises. And you didn't, Detective Holmes, seeing how you let your own dinner develop into a creature befitting the depths of hell.”

As the sun outside shifted toward the sea, its light shifted onto John, bathing his right side in a pale and beautiful orange. Unlike the shade of orange he had now completely forgotten about. “I've never informed you of my birthday. Day nor year.”

“Mycroft.”

“Damn him.”

“Hey,” John smiled again, eyes crinkling in that wonderful way they did when he was genuinely happy. A state of mind in which Sherlock could not fathom why John would be. “It's okay about the ham. I've bought other gifts, too,” he said, crossing the room and returning with one of those obnoxious green tote bags the environmentally-conscious use when they shop.

Sherlock turned over on the couch in order to face John as he knelt down on the floor with the bag. Most of his recent birthdays didn't come with gifts (except from Mycroft and his parents, which did not count as gifts but as bribery for phone calls).

“Did you just call ham a gift?” Sherlock muttered, John being close enough for him to not have to speak properly anymore.

John grinned, his fowl mood alleviated, and not due to Sherlock's manipulation. “It is a gift. You may still have it if you like.”

Sherlock chuckled. “That's quite all right.” He watched John rummage through the bag. His heartbeat reached his ears – he felt like a child, excited about gifts. So excited they could literally be anything and he would be pleased. Is this how other people were on their birthdays? Elated by small things?

“I'll give you a small one now,” John said, handing him a black box that fit neatly in his palm. “Do you remember that story of the aquarium?”

Sherlock looked up. Yes. He visited the aquarium as a small child with his brother and pet an otter. It was slimy and he spit on it because he wanted to feel the difference in texture between otter slime and saliva. Naturally Mycroft pulled him away from the otters and hasn't seen another since.

But it would surely be a tiny otter that fits in this box...

After the otters they visited a small shop that held stuffed animals, seahorse erasers, sealife jigsaw puzzles, and keychains shaped like aquatic animals with names inscribed upon them. There were dolphins, whales, stingrays, crabs, and otters.

Sherlock wanted an otter. There were otters with 'John' and 'Peter' and 'Leslie' and 'Stephen' and lo and behold, not a 'Sherlock' in sight. Even upon the other animals, his name was excluded from the collection of what he counted as 238 different names.

The only item that could fit inside this box did not exist.

He opened it.

Sat tenderly inside the folds of purple silk was a grey keychain in the shape of a smiling otter. And upon its body, written in golden letters, was 'Sherlock'.

There have been few times in his life Sherlock has been shocked into silence. Usually he considered all possibilities, the absurd, statistically unlikely, what others were blinded toward but that he could see with clear and keen eyes.

And yet here was a possibility he did not consider. That what he had always thought to not exist could be created.

So simply.

“John, I-” he began, but his voice caught.

John laughed and pushed the bag aside as he sat down. “I put in the order about two months ago, came only last week, the bastards. Picked it up at the post office while I was out.” He paused. “You seem to like it. I'm very glad.”

Sherlock nodded quietly, fingering the otter, letting the pinkish orange of the sunset catch the golden lettering. “It's wonderful, John,” he finally whispered so low John bent forward to hear him. “Thank you.”

John beamed. “Right then, so that's one down, couple more to go. There's some salmon in the freezer that should aptly replace the ham.” He stood up with the bag and walked to the kitchen, setting it on the table next to two jars of pickles: one mysteriously devoid of mold, one unrecognizably fuzzy.

Sherlock sat up on the couch, continuing to turn the otter over and over between his fingers. He cleared his throat. “Could you sauté some asparagus as well?”

 

–

 

“All right,” John said, moving the jar of fuzzy pickles to make room for the second gift: a wrapped box roughly the size and shape of a tall mug. “Here's the second.”

Sherlock poked another bit of salmon with his fork and twisted it absent-mindedly. John stayed silent. “No introduction?”

His flatmate shook his head. “No, you'll guess it again. I saw that you guessed it before you opened it, I can read faces, too.” He popped a stick of asparagus in his mouth. “Open it,” he said through bites. “No need to know what it is beforehand.”

How frustrating. Sherlock picked it up. Not heavy. He shook it. Very faint shuffling. Either tightly packaged or very soft. The size of two fists, light, soft, obtainable by John (inexpensive), probably a suggestion from Mycroft, something he would like as a gift. What does his family buy him for his birthday?

Books. A book would not fit inside this (unless it were scroll. Unlikely).

Gift-cards. Money. Too big.

Furniture. Tables. Desks. Fire pokers. Too small.

Weaponry. John disapproves of violence (at least, in the house).

“Sherlock, please don't stare at it all day,” John sighed. “Just _open it._ I'll give you a hint if you really want one.”

“I don't want a hint.”

“Open it.”

“A minute.”

“Sherlock.”

“Is it candy?”

“What? No.”

“Is it edible?”

“Maybe.”

“It's not ham.”

“No.”

“Hm.”

He shook it again. Edible.

Edible.

Food.

Something he liked.

Ah.

“Goddammit Sherlock, you're not supposed to _guess_ it.” John narrowed his eyes. Read his face again? Was he always that obvious or were John's skills of observation truly improving?

He ripped off the paper and opened the box. He was right.

Tea. A tall tightly-packed tin of loose-leaf tea.

“It's got cardamom, cinnamon, orange, you know. That case, that one time, you tasted the victim's tea-”

“And I said-”

“'This is brilliant'. Yeah. And you've never so much as smiled at a cup of tea before-”

“Who smiles at tea?”

“-and so I found out which tea it was and bought it. I smile at tea. Lots of people smile at tea.”

“That's stupid.”

“Are you happy with it or not?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock brought the tea to his nose and breathed in. It was lovely.

When he had tasted that tea, he had mumbled those words so quietly and left so quickly. He hadn't noticed John stay behind. It was an awful lot of trouble, to go and buy a large tin of tea simply because he had called it brilliant. And yet here was the tin.

He had very much underestimated John.

“Good,” John replied, gathering the plates. “Shall I make some then?”

Sherlock handed the tea over. “I really do appreciate the trouble you went for this, John.”

Very briefly, extreme surprise flicked over John's features. But they relaxed quickly. “It was no trouble. Just some fumbling around a dead man's kitchen. Worth it to know you're having a nice birthday.”

“Mm.” Sherlock watched as he filled the kettle with water. “Not often does anybody pay so much mind to my birthday.”

Placing the kettle on the stovetop, John turned around and gave another eye-crinkle smile. “Well, people should, Sherlock. You deserve it.”

 

–

 

“This tea is quite good hot, actually,” John said, leaning back in his chair as Sherlock pored over some files from previous cases, comparing, circling, taking notes. “I had only tasted it cold, like you did, that one day. Properly prepared, it's splendid.”

Sherlock clicked his special purple pen shut. Perhaps the fact he had a special purple pen tipped John off to his favorite color. He hadn't counted on John paying so much attention to everything he did or said – the random childhood recounts, the offhand murmurings, which writing utensils he most strongly favored. All of his observations were culminating in this one day of arbitrarily-acquired, incredibly thoughtful gifts. Did he even know John's birthday? Should he?

The purple candles on the mantel were alight, flickering that same sunset orange on the wall that that their dim evening lamp didn't quite catch. John wore a different jumper – also purple. The amount of purple things today – the jumper, the silk, the candles – was getting slightly ridiculous, but Sherlock, sipping his cardamom tea, playing with his specially-ordered otter keychain, didn't really mind.

“All right,” John said, breaking the silence and clapping his hands. Sherlock didn't look up. Not really a point in looking at people as they speak when they aren't criminals. “Are you ready for last one?”

“Yes.” He dragged another box of files in front of his lap and flipped through them. Batter. No. Bertram. No. Burlington – the triple homicide, injured dog, house littered in tulip petals. Yes. Who was the murderer? Might help with the -

“Sherlock. Hey. Hello. Look at me.”

Sherlock sighed and put the file down. For you, John. For nobody else. He looked up.

John held a card. A card? Do cards count as gifts? Don't they simply accompany them and then get tossed out with the junk mail? “Here,” he said, squatting down on the floor and handing it to Sherlock. It was a deep purple card – beautiful, but come on – and, like the otter, golden letters scratched into the front. So it's a homemade card. Although John's handwriting is usually atrocious, obvious from the notes he writes during cases and transcribes to his blogs, the words in front weren't so bad. 'For Sherlock'. The S even had a little flourishing curl.

He opened it.

 

_Sherlock,_

_We've been flatmates for a little over a year now, and I've taken this day to try and show you how valuable you've become to me. You've brought excitement and happiness back into my life. You've healed my ailment of boredom and stress, of ennui and lack of motivation for getting up in the morning. You make the world a colorful place – and I deeply cherish your friendship more than I do anything else in this world. Thank you for being so brilliant, and for sharing your brilliance with this dull army doctor. I love you. Happy Birthday._

_Yours,_

_John_

 

 _“_ A little sappy, I know, the whole 'I love you' bit,” John said, voice shaking slightly, “but you know, that's, you know, how it is. Sorry your presents were so small, but-” John stopped. Sherlock's arms tightly wrapped around his neck. John collapsed from his squatting position onto the floor. Sherlock stayed.

“Thank you,” his friend whispered, soft black curls brushing his cheek as Sherlock buried his face into John's shoulder. Hesitantly, carefully, John placed his hand on Sherlock's back and stroked it. Silently, to the music of the candles flickering, they sat in embrace.

Sherlock pulled his head away but kept his arms around John. “Never have I been the subject of such affection,” he whispered. “I don't-I don't know how to respond.” He stared intently into John's eyes as if he would find an answer there. He swallowed. “I love you too, John.”

Grinning, John tilted his head and met his forehead with Sherlock's. Eyes glued together, breathing in tandem, John's face suddenly read struggle. Indecision. And clear as day, Sherlock read why.

His lips brushed John's.

John's face instantly turned a brilliant shade of red.

“I deduced you before you could me,” Sherlock smiled. John turned redder. “Granted, I'll always be better than you, but I still had high hopes for you, Watson.”

John laughed and shrugged Sherlock's arms away, pushing him to the floor. “You irritating sod,” he said, climbing on top of him, “You are _the_ worst.” He kissed him again. And again. And then they knocked over Sherlock's tea, which spilt onto several papers, and Sherlock sat it upright.

And again.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that was the fluffiest fluff that ever did fluffing exist. I would be very happy if you let me know what you thought of my fluff down below. Much much appreciated. <3


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